Marathon Bombing Survivor Jeff Bauman

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES ARCHIVES BOSTON MARATHON SURVIVOR JEFF BAUMAN TBook Collections Copyright © 2015 The New York Times Company. All rights reserved. Cover Photograph by Josh Haner/The New York Times This ebook was created using Vook. All of the articles in this work originally appeared in The New York Times. eISBN: 9781508003892 The New York Times Company New York, NY www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/tbooks In Grisly Image, a Father Sees His Son By TIM ROHAN April 16, 2013 BOSTON — When Jeff Bauman woke up in a hospital bed on Tuesday, an air tube was down his throat, both of his legs had been amputated at the knee, and his father was by his side. He tried to talk, but he could not. He looked angry, as he motioned his arms up and out like shock waves and mouthed: “Boom! Boom!” Jeff Bauman is the man in the photograph that has become an icon of the Boston Marathon attack, the one showing a bloodied, distraught young man, holding his left thigh, being wheeled away by a man in a cowboy hat. If the world could not identify him immediately, Mr. Bauman’s father — also named Jeff Bauman — certainly could. That was his son with his legs destroyed, wearing a favorite shirt. That was his son. When the explosions went off at the Boston Marathon, Jeff Bauman, 52, called his son’s cellphone again and again — no answer. He knew his son was there, to cheer for his girlfriend, Erin Hurley, who was running her first Boston Marathon. For an hour, he kept calling, calling. No answer. Then his stepdaughter, Erika, called him. “Did you see the picture?” she asked. “Jeffrey’s on the news. He got hurt.” “Are you sure? Are you sure?” He was shouting now. “Yes! Yes! I’m sure!” she shouted back. Mr. Bauman found the picture on Facebook. It was not the whole picture, the one that showed Jeff’s left leg blown off at the calf. He started calling Boston-area hospitals and found his son registered at Boston Medical Center. He and his wife, Csilla, drove from their home in Concord, N.H., and reached Jeff’s side just before 8 p.m. The surgery was already done. Both Jeff’s legs had been amputated at the knee. He had lost an excessive amount of blood. During surgery, the doctors had to keep resuscitating him, giving him blood and fluids, because he had lost so much. Jeff, 27, is a good kid, never got in trouble, his father said. He likes playing guitar. He works behind the deli counter at Costco. He plans to pay off his student loans and go back to school at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. During the marathon, he was standing at the finish line waiting for Ms. Hurley, alongside her two roommates. Ms. Hurley was still about a mile away when the blasts went off, far enough away that she did not know what had happened. Why had everyone stopped? Jeff was the first casualty brought to Boston Medical, his family was told. He went through the first operation and then a second, about 1 a.m., to drain internal fluids caused by the blunt trauma. That night, Jeff’s half-brother, Alan, called from his boot camp at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Tex. His father told him Jeff had been hurt but did not say how badly. He planned to tell Alan the whole truth later. The Baumans knew how lucky Jeff had been. “The man in the cowboy hat — he saved Jeff’s life,” Ms. Bauman said. Mr. Bauman’s eyes widened. He said: “There’s a video where he goes right to Jeff, picks him right up and puts him on the wheelchair and starts putting the tourniquet on him and pushing him out. I got to talk to this guy!” The man in the cowboy hat, Carlos Arredondo, 52, had been handing out American flags to runners when the first explosion went off. His son Alexander was a Marine killed in Iraq in 2004, and in the years since he has handed out the flags as a tribute. With the first blast, Mr. Arredondo jumped over the fence and ran toward the people lying on the ground. What happened next, he later recounted to a reporter: He found a young man, a spectator, whose shirt was on fire. He beat out the flames with his hands. The young man, who turned out to be Jeff Bauman, had lost the lower portion of both legs. He took off a shirt and tied it around the stump of one leg. He stayed with Mr. Bauman, comforting him, until emergency workers came to help carry him to an ambulance. He helped only one man, Mr. Bauman. On Tuesday afternoon, the Baumans wondered what had become of the man in the cowboy hat. They wanted to tell him that their son was alive, that he was moving his arms and legs. But he might be in the hospital for two more weeks. What would he do when he was not so sedated? They plan to bring him his guitar. What would they say to him when he came to? The elder Mr. Bauman covered his mouth with his hand. “I just don’t know,” he said, and he started to cry. Binyamin Appelbaum contributed reporting from Boston, and Kitty Bennett contributed research from New York. Beyond the Finish Line: The Recovery of a Boston Marathon Bombing Victim Jeff Bauman waited at the finish line at the 2013 Boston Marathon to cheer for his girlfriend. In one flash, his life changed. (Josh Haner/The New York Times) By TIM ROHAN July 7, 2013 BOSTON — Jeff Bauman stared straight ahead, his eyes wary and unconvinced, as his doctor told him the next procedure would be easy and painless. He sat in his wheelchair at Boston Medical Center, and Dr. Jeffrey Kalish, his primary surgeon, explained how a resident would remove the sutures from his legs. Most of Bauman’s legs were gone. He had been waiting for his girlfriend near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15 when the first of two bombs detonated and blew them off. An iconic sporting event had turned into a scene of chilling devastation, and a photograph of Bauman in the aftermath, his legs gruesomely lost, later became a searing symbol of the attacks. The day of the bombings, Bauman had had an emergency, through-knee amputation that lasted about two hours. A surgeon had sifted through layers of skin, tissue and muscle, preserving what was healthy, cutting what was dirty and sick. He had removed what was left of Bauman’s lower legs at the knee joints. Two days later, Kalish had performed a formal amputation at about four inches above the knee. He had measured the legs and cut each layer — skin, tissue, muscle and bone — farther up in the thigh, like a staircase. Then he washed out the legs for 10 minutes, tucked the muscle, and stitched the tissue. Bauman’s legs had been reduced to stumps, sewn shut across each base. Now, as Kalish spoke, Bauman pulled his left leg toward his chest and eyed the sutures. “We literally just yank and cut,” Kalish said. Bauman looked away. “Compared to everything you’ve been through, this is going to be a breeze. How about that?” Kalish left the room, Bauman climbed onto a table, and the resident started on his left leg. There were 25 sutures to remove from his left and 24 from his right. The resident worked slowly, pulling and cutting, leaving the especially deep ones for Kalish to do. Bauman did not care to watch. He lay back, rested on his elbows and glanced out the window at the darkening sky and an American flag at half-staff. It had been one month since the bombings. The resident moved on to his right leg, and on the third suture, as she pulled and cut, he cried out and grimaced and closed his eyes. “O.K. — pain? O.K.,” she said. “We’ll just — we’ll go from the other side.” She paused and watched his face twist. “Do you need a break?” she asked. “No,” he said as the pain left his face and he opened his eyes. “That one hurt.” She did what she could with the right leg, and then went and retrieved Kalish. There were 10 deep ones left for him to do. He started with the left leg, and a few minutes later, Bauman whimpered again, softer now. He tried to hold back. After this, there would be no more procedures. There was nothing more his doctors could do. His legs would be this way for the rest of his life. Learning to walk again, and whatever happened after that, was up to him. Kalish said nothing and kept working. Bauman was crying now. “Sorry,” Kalish said, without looking up. “Almost done.” Five minutes later, he was finished, and Bauman’s legs were bleeding. “You did it,” Kalish said. “I hope that wasn’t so awful.” A Backpack and a Bang Early on the morning of April 15, Bauman drove his girlfriend, Erin Hurley, to a meeting point for her charity running team. “You better win,” he said as she got out of the car. She laughed. Bauman then napped at Hurley’s apartment in Brighton, and at about 1:15 p.m. drove with her roommates, Remy Lawler and Michele Mahoney, to a marathon checkpoint in Newton.

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